And yet the extracts I have given from his journal show that it
would be hard to beat the Amerindians for disagreeable ferocity when
intoxicated.
Henry, summing up his experiences before leaving for the Pacific coast
in 1811, writes these remarks in his diary:--
"What a different set of people they would be, were there not a drop
of liquor in the country! If a murder is committed among the Saulteurs
(Ojibwes), it is always in a drinking match. We may truly say that
liquor is the root of all evil in the north-west. Great bawling and
lamentation went on, and I was troubled most of the night for liquor
to wash away grief."
As a rule, the treatment of the Amerindians by the British and French
settlers was good, except the thrusting of alcohol on them. But in
Newfoundland a great crime was perpetrated. Between the middle of the
seventeenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries the British
fishermen and settlers on the coasts of Newfoundland had _destroyed_
the native population of Beothik Indians.
Before the English arrived on the coasts of Newfoundland the Beothiks
lived an ideal life for savages. They were well clothed with beasts'
skins, and in the winter these were supplemented by heavy fur robes.
Countless herds of reindeer roamed through the interior, passing from
north to south in the autumn and returning in the spring.
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